A more intriguing question is whether the Graffiti approach can be applied to full-text search. Many modern search engines, notably the hideous, awfully-named Bing, are actually multiple applications under the hood - just like WA. If Bing figures out that you are searching for a product, it will show you one UI. If it figures out that you are searching for a celebrity, it will show you another UI. It may also switch algorithms, data sets, etc, etc. I'm sure Google has all kinds of analogous, if more subtle, meta-algorithms.

While generic full-text search, unlike generic data visualization, remains a viable application and a very useful one, specialized search might (or might not - this is not my area of expertise) be an even more useful one. If the user has an affordance by which to tell the algorithm the purpose or category of her search, the whole problem of guessing which application to direct the query to disappears and is solved perfectly. A whole class of category errors ceases to exist.

My guess is that if there is any "next thing" in search interfaces, it will come not from smarter UIs, but from dumber ones in which the user does more work - the Graffiti effect. If a small quantity of user effort can produce a substantial improvement in user experience (which is a big if), the user will accept the bargain. Hey, it made Jeff Hawkins rich.

The fact that the IETF has decided to ignore those problems so that HTTP 2 can be pushed out the door is what makes the situation be such a joke. Almost the only entities that will benefit from having HTTP 2 in the next 5 years are companies that have a web presence on the same scale as Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. that will save a small amount of money through reduced bandwidth costs.

For everyone else, rolling out HTTP 2 will be a massive initial and ongoing technical burden, with almost no benefit.

What Apple gets and what no one else in the industry does is that using your mobile device for payments will only work if it’s far easier and better than using a credit card. With CurrentC, you’ll have to unlock your phone, launch their app, point your camera at a QR code, and wait. With Apple Pay, you just take out your phone and put your thumb on the Touch ID sensor.

Tim Cook was exactly right on stage last month when he introduced Apple Pay: it’s the only mobile payment solution designed around improving the customer experience. CurrentC is designed around the collection of customer data and the ability to offer coupons and other junk. Here is what a printed receipt from CVS looks like (https://twitter.com/fromedome/status/526027483901333505). It looks like a joke, but that’s for real. And that’s the sort of experience they want to bring to mobile payments....

And the reason they don’t want to allow Apple Pay is because Apple Pay doesn’t give them any personal information about the customer. It’s not about security — Apple Pay is far more secure than any credit/debit card system in the U.S. It’s not about money — Apple’s tiny slice of the transaction comes from the banks, not the merchants. It’s about data.

Apple's great strategic advantages over Google, is that they put their customers (i.e. the people who buy Apple's goods and services) needs over their partners needs to be able to data mine those users.

The author who says that this is 'most alarming' is missing one key thing; sometimes people use computers that belong to someone else.

Any company that needs it's employees to be able to use the internet, but also want to be able to detect any employee that is sending documents via the internet to outside of the company would love to use this, as well as have every permission to install this on their own computers. They could then have the employees computers trust the SSL proxy, and it could easily detect any documents being transmitted.

Australia dithering leaving NATO to avoid complete economic meltdown when they suddenly can't sell their mining produce to it any more

Australia realised during World War 2, that they were completely dependent on the US to be able to prevent invasion and occupation of Australia from Japanese forces. Since then they a strategy of doing everything that the US wants, to retain the strong military alliance between them.

Although it would hurt massively in the short term, I can't see _anything_ that would break that alliance. It would basically be a declaration that Australia would be prepared to become allied with and accepting military occupation by China.

And it would just be the short term - if there was a military conflict with China that shut down trade, having several hundred million people suddenly unemployed in China would cause a faster change in government there than not being able to buy the latest iPhone or more plastic crap would in the US and Australia.

If it's for either the current version of a technology or is for a technology that is version free - keep it. e.g. The Data compression book, and The Pragmatic Programmer are both 15 years old but are still great books that people could learn a lot from.

If it's for a technology that has had a newer version (or versions) released - probably bin it. Even a book a couple of years old will be massively out of for technologies that are advancing rapidly. e.g. a book on how to develop for iPhones that was released in say, late 2009, would be almost completely irrelevant now.

Still better than JonKatz. At least there are SOME facts here (the beta driver doesn't list XP as supported), instead of an axe-grinding opinion piece about how some sicko's psychopathic acts are understandable because he is really a victim of the bugbear du jour.